Many different polythiophenes have been studied extensively in recent years due to their interesting and useful electrical and/or optical characteristics. For example, polythiophenes generally become electrically conducting upon chemical or electrochemical oxidation or reduction.
However, there remains a need in this field to develop additional types of thiophene monomers and crosslinkers which can be used, by themselves or in copolymers with other monomers, to prepare polythiophenes having varied or improved properties in order to meet certain desired end-use requirements. For example, the introduction of functionalized thiophene monomers bearing one or more substituents which may have functional groups capable of being further reacted or modifying particular attributes of the polymer would be of great interest, since such functional and/or substituted monomers can enhance the versatility of thiophene polymers.